


radiant

by glasscamellias



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Body Horror, Crying, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Misgendering, Multi, Post True Ending (We Know the Devil), Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24309745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscamellias/pseuds/glasscamellias
Summary: "Group South does everything perfectly and is the fucking worst. The best kids in a camp for bad kids are absolutely certain to be the fucking worst."At the end of the world, Group South won't let go of each other.
Relationships: Jupiter/Neptune/Venus (We Know the Devil)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 54





	radiant

**Author's Note:**

> For identifying purposes:  
> -Perseid is the leader with the snapback and the shirt with his own face on it  
> -Orionid is the guy whose eyes are covered by his hair  
> -Leonid is the girl with the ponytail and bible

It was hard to see where they were going, their radios flickering in the dark. The best they could do was to hold onto each other’s shirts, try not to slip in the mud, and follow the counselors’ brighter lights. It only ever took two kids to defeat the devil, so why were all of them going? It looked like the whole camp was hiking to the abandoned cabin. Had something happened to Group West?

Wings spread above the treeline. The counselors shouted something, but the rain was too loud to hear any of them, slapping the words from their ears. Perseid lifted his radio, the rest of Group South mirroring him at either side. In the distance, he could see the blurred lights of other summer scouts readying their attacks.

It was too chaotic to time everyone together, but the blasts slammed into the mass of the devil, splashes of glittering lights one after another. The wind eased, just long enough to wonder if it had really worked.

The devil sneered and raised her chin, black water dripping off it. He had a moment to think _Neptune, of course it’s Neptune_ , before a pair of hands fell on her shoulders on her face around her waist. Before the sky flared with open eyes and wings wrapped around them both, a flaming halo wheeling above the trees. There wasn’t one devil, there were three.

The crystal in his radio shattered. He could hear Group East scream in surprise. A finger flicked against his forehead, hard, and it didn’t belong to Leonid or Orionid.

The few kids he could see in the gloom stared up at the thing, mouths gaping—the devil is supposed to be weak, even for the bottom-of-the-barrel summer scout rejects. That should have burned the devil right off the three of them, but the sirens still screamed around them, the loudest he’d heard. God’s voice still came out of the broken radio, telling them all to keep fighting.

His radio sparked uselessly, little stars of energy that died before they could reach Group West. The two of them continued to fire, but he could see glowing cracks traveling up their radios.

A shoulder slammed into his as someone ran past him, and from the flashes of light, he could see a girl from Northwest, only recognizable by her light-up sneakers. She stumbled, waving her arms to keep her balance, and in the light of his sputtering radio, their eyes met.

Before he could think to hold onto her, she was already sprinting away, heading toward Group West unarmed, shouting something he couldn’t decipher. Was it a distraction, so the rest of her group could fire? As she approached, hands balled up into fists unfurled, palms reaching out to her. Why was she smiling like that?

Once he realized what was happening to the Northwest girl, something he didn’t have words for, he couldn’t keep watching. He dropped the radio, the mud eating it up, took each of their hands in his, and ran. Leonid pulled back at first, shouting that they couldn’t give up, but the three of them always fell in step with each other sooner than later. They thrashed their way through the woods, running half-blind with inky rain in their eyes. His vision blurred, and he saw things he tried to blink away.

It was so hard to see that they ran into the side of a cabin and had to circle it to find the door. A cabin was safe like hiding under a blanket was safe. They could get out of the storm, call God on the house radio, make a new plan. As if cabin walls could keep out the devil. He lingered at the door, searching the trees for other campers, but there was no one there. Orionid jostled him out of the way to set down a line of salt and rosemary, and he joined Leonid in drawing the usual symbols on the windows. He wasn’t sure it could keep out a triple devil, but it was routine by now.

They roughly toweled off with another group’s towels, and he tried not to think about who they belonged to, and whether they were still out there, fighting and being more devout than the three of them. Would someone notice in the chaos? Would anyone else come running in here for shelter?

They prayed as Orionid set the radio to 109.8 fm. They leaned in, even though God’s always louder than expected, and it would hurt, being so close that their hair brushed the fractals of the radio. There had to be a parable to make things right.

“I didn’t mean for this to hurt you. Sweethearts, it’s going to be difficult, but I have a place for the three of you.”

It wasn’t God. God never speaks to you, only at you, and never that gentle. It was a voice you could go to sleep to, and his eyes fluttered. He should have reached for the dial, but he wanted to hear that voice again. No one had talked to him like that in a long time.

Leonid lunged for the radio, switching through stations like God had drifted a few numbers to the left. There was static, and then bells, and then a voice. He wanted it to be the Devil again, wanted it to reassure him for a second, and the thought lasted long enough that God must have heard and abandoned him.

The voice was only half-recognizable underneath water gurgling, like Neptune was drowning. “I would’ve thought you guys would’ve run away already.” She snorted, or at least he thought she had, through the sounds of bubbling. “Guess I underestimated you.”

Neptune was never _soft_ , but the acid in her voice wasn’t enough to strip skin this time. “You could join us, if you wanted. The devil’s better than you think. It misses you too. It sees something worth missing.”

Anything else crackled away when Leonid yanked the crystal out of the radio. “Maybe it’s broken,” she said, gasping it out in between shallow breaths, removing herbs and wire and rearranging them with tiny corrections, squinting in the flickering light. She put it together and tuned in again.

“You’re gonna hyperventilate,” a devil with the voice of Jupiter said, and Leonid screamed, throwing the radio across the room where it slammed into the side of a bunk bed and went silent.

And she really was, chest heaving too fast to get any real air. Hesitantly, though no one was watching to hiss about leaving room for Jesus, he held out his arms and she deflated into them, her heart pounding against his. Orionid leaned in to join them, his cheek against the curve of her back.

“This is so fucked up,” Leonid whispered. “We fucked up real bad.”

“It’s all fucked up,” Perseid answered, and there was a little comfort in echoing her. They were a team, they walked in unison. It was all going to hell but at least they were there together.

(A traitorous voice asked why three scouts in lockstep couldn’t destroy the devil, said that maybe his lack of faith had failed them.)

( _You could have been a real scout team, no one would separate you then, you wouldn’t have to say goodbye in a week if you hadn’t been so pathetic. You would be the devil, if it came for you.)_

“Sunrise is only a few hours away,” Perseid said, hoping he sounded confident. “It’ll be weaker when it’s light out. If we rest, we’ll be ready to escape.” At least, none of the devils he’d ever heard about lasted that long, but he was starting to think they didn’t have a reference point for something like this. Orionid snuffled, and Leonid tried to wipe her face with a still-soggy sleeve, and all of them nodded.

There were more than enough beds for the three of them, but as Leonid sat down and he stepped away, about to pick one in the next row, she caught his hand. “Don’t—don’t go too far. We need to be ready and together in case something happens.” He put a foot on the ladder rung, ready to climb up and take the bunk bed above her, and she bit her lip. “Just... stay here, both of you. Please? Is that okay?”

“You sure?” Orionid looked nervous. “We’d probably squish you. And shouldn’t we have someone keep watch?”

“I don’t _care_ , okay? We all need sleep for tomorrow, and those three aren’t the most subtle devils. We’ll know if they show up.”

He took way too long to turn off the lights and take off his shoes, trying not to outright watch them arrange themselves. Leonid fit in the middle, and at first Orionid was half-leaning off the edge, where a single snore would knock him off. She huffed and pulled him closer to her side, putting an arm around his waist. That would leave her back to him, and there wasn’t a lot of room left.

“Perseid,” Orionid whispered. “You’re making this weird, c’mon.” Very cautiously, the bed creaking, he laid down. His arm dangled off the side when he tried to lay on his back and he reluctantly rolled over to hold her as well. Orionid stretched an arm over him, and he tried not to think about getting a boner with the three of them wrapped together so close. It wasn’t like that, right? You couldn’t do that sort of thing at camp.

(She _was_ cute, and Orionid was good looking for being a guy, with a pretty face underneath those bangs, but he wasn’t going to get a boner. That’d be ridiculous. He was sharing body heat with his bros, nothing weird or perverted about that.)

The sirens screamed around them, but somehow, they managed to sleep, and he was out before he knew whether Leonid snored.

-

It was brighter than he expected, and he buried his face against someone’s shoulder for a few minutes. At any minute a camp counselor would come to bang on the door, and it’d be out to... to....?

Perseid opened his eyes and saw the cabin in ruins. The windows had been blown in, the blinds ripped away and scattered on the floor. He didn’t have to look to know that rain and wind had scattered all their salt lines. It looked like they had slept through a siege, except for the fact that their bed was completely untouched, a circle where there was no broken glass or rain-soaked sheets or anything. Something had kept them safe.

( _It can’t be God, he’s not here, he hasn’t said a word—_ )

The storm from last night had faded into a light sunshower. _The devil’s beating his wife_ , his grandma used to call it. It wasn’t cold, despite the destroyed windows, but the three of them had huddled together, too close to be appropriate. A counselor would have told them that God was frowning down at them.

Leonid had turned to him in the night, and now her cheek pressed against his chest, with Orionid draped over her, his arm reaching over them as far as it could go. His muddy clothes had dried to him and they’d slept on top of the blankets, and if he sneezed he was sure he’d fall off the mattress, but he felt more comfortable than he had in years. In Boys’ Bunk C, his had been on the opposite side of the room from Orionid, and Leonid was halfway across the camp in Girls’ Bunk A, where, based on their breakfast conversations, no one liked her.

He let them sleep for a while longer, watching the two of them breathe as best he could without sitting up and disturbing their tangle of limbs. His neck was stiff, and he probably had indents in his legs from his jeans, and they all smelled like pond water, but it was okay. He wouldn’t have minded that much if they kept on sleeping until the end of the world, but eventually the other two stirred.

As they started to shift around in an almost awake haze, it gave him enough room to pull away. He pulled his shoes on and tried not to stare at Leonid stretching her limbs out all catlike while Orionid grumbled and buried his face against her shoulder. They looked natural together, even cute.

That fuzzy soft atmosphere didn’t last once the other two took in the wreckage of the cabin. That damage could’ve been them.

“It’s light out now, we could try for the highway,” Leonid offered, her fingers twisting around themselves. She had dropped her bible in the panic last night, and now her hands twitched, needing to hold something. But it would’ve been weird to hold her hand. When running for your life, it was fine, but maybe not in general? “The counselors could’ve radioed the next town over and there’ll be people waiting to help us.”

Orionid leaned out of one of the broken windows, glass crunching underneath his shoes. “I don’t see anyone else out here, kids or counselors.”

“Maybe everyone escaped and they’re coming with backup?” he offered, nervously. Which meant _you have been left behind,_ meant _nobody noticed your whole team was gone_ , maybe meant _no one cared if Team South was missing._

Or maybe the rest of camp was all dead, bodies stacked up just beyond their line of sight.

“It’s really quiet out. Do you think the counselors won after all?” Orionid asked as he edged out through the empty frame, careful not to brush against jagged bits of glass along the edges, holding onto the sill. “I think I can hear someone? But it’s so far away that I can’t—”

With a sharp cry, Orionid jolted back, his shoulder tearing against the glass and more biting into his arms and hands as he tried and failed to catch himself from falling on his ass. The two of them were at his side in a moment, helping him up and to a glass-free section of floor.

“What did you see,” Leonid demanded, even as she started wiggling a shard of glass out of his palm. “What’s out there?” Both of them stared at him, like something might fall apart if they dared to look out the window themselves.

Orionid hunched over, bangs shadowing his face, breathing raggedly. “The sky’s full of wings and eyes,” he breathed out, but he didn’t sound scared, just surprised. “I think it’s Venus...?”

Those had to be two different facts—wimpy Venus couldn’t be the devil in the sky. Yeah, maybe he had been the devil for a few minutes, but if any of them had been brought back to normal, it would have been.... her....?

“They’re all still out there,” Orionid said. “The counselors couldn’t finish it. They’re too strong.”

“We don’t have to fight, not when there’s still time to run for it,” Leonid said in a harsh whisper, like one of Group West would hear, and hell, maybe they could. Perseid didn’t know the rules anymore. “We’re not far from the highway. We could call our parents from town.”

“You really think that’s going to work?” Orionid hissed. “Mine wouldn’t take me back. Being around the devil this long without beating it— we’re failures at best. I’ll be going back to an exorcism if they let me in the door at all. You guys could try, but I can’t.”

He had a thought of running down the middle of the highway, Leonid’s sweating hand in his, trying to escape the rusted clouds above them. But his other hand would be empty, and that couldn’t be right.

They were three meteor showers that no one else could stand, who had never met before camp, who became South when no one bothered to remember their names and took it as a sign of pride. If Perseid left Orionid behind, he wasn’t sure he could be normal anymore.

“So, what, you’re going to stay here? An exorcism is a hell of a lot better than dying,” Leonid said, but her mouth twisted as she spoke. Maybe she was imagining her parents doing the same thing.

“And being the devil is better than both.”

Orionid struggled to his feet, ignoring the bleeding, which dripped faster and clearer now. He didn’t seem to feel it, even when he put his hands right onto a seam of glass shards and leaned back out the window. The two of them hurried to follow him, and Leonid reached out like she would drag him back but didn’t.

“Are you listening, Group West?” Orionid screamed into the blinking sky. “You guys win! You can have my soul or whatever the fuck you want! Just get it over with! You’re getting me, so leave the others alone!”

“You can’t—”

“It’s not poker; nobody loses.” It couldn’t be Jupiter, but it was. Branches fluttered and snapped around her, and there were so many hands it was hard to see anything, but it was still her face, her voice. Sort of. “And nobody _has_ to join the devil. You could still go, if you wanted to, if you still hate us that much.”

“I don’t want to go.” He climbed out through the window before either of them could stop him, gashing open lines in himself that weren’t bleeding now. If he squinted, Perseid could see something shifting around in those open wounds. “Is it worth it, being the devil?”

She immediately darted after him, skidding on puddles on her way to the cabin door, while he froze. Maybe it wasn’t safe out there. West could attack them, or maybe the sun shower was actually acid rain, but... If so, he couldn’t let his friends run off into it alone. He turned his hat around and barreled out after Leonid.

“There’s no campfire hymns, for starters,” Jupiter said. When Orionid reached out, two of the thousands of hands swarming her held his. “It’s more honest. You don’t have to pretend to be a good little summer scout anymore.”

Leonid sprinted to his side through the puddles and mud without hesitating, and he followed. Whatever was happening to Orionid, they needed to be there. “What about God? Isn’t he gonna strike us down for this?” Leonid asked. She looked up like a grim face would be glaring down at them from a cloud, but he wasn’t there. The radios and sirens were quiet.

“He can try. Him and all the counselors and all the kids they’ll send to stop us. But he hasn’t said a peep, so I think he’s too scared.”

“I’m in. As long as you don’t hurt them, devil me up,” Orionid said, but Perseid was pretty sure it had started the moment Jupiter had held her hands out to him. There was foam gathering on the edge of his cuts, and if Perseid looked at him straight on, he looked kind of translucent, with a rhythmic movement underneath.

“So we’ll be safe?” Perseid asked.

“We’ll make it safe. You won’t have to lie, anymore. You can have bodies that fit properly.”

Leonid clapped a hand over her mouth, trying not to cry. “You can’t promise that. They won’t let you do this.”

A hand reached out towards her head, then paused, fingers curling. “Can I touch you, South? Shit, still don’t know your names. We all let them fuck us up, huh? Making us all hate each other because your group got special privileges for speaking in tongues, like it was some kinda contest.”

She nodded, tears welling up. They didn’t dissolve in the rain—instead, they fell audibly to the ground, rolling there and refusing to melt into the dirt. Like pearls or beads. Jupiter began to run her fingers through her hair, working out knots where she found them.

“Think about how many people they’d send to get this under control,” Leonid sobbed out. “Full scout teams, I’d bet, the professionals. At some point they’d start aiming to kill, not to just chase the devil away. I don’t... don’t want you guys to die, not like that. Not anybody.”

More and more, that hand met resistance as it moved through the strands. It sounded like wind chimes. The sun made her shimmer, like she was turning into glass. Rainbows bounced off of her.

“I’m not gonna lie, it could get messy. I think they’re all paying attention now. But a lot of the camp’s already with us, and all of us together are stronger than they’ll ever expect. We’ve got this.”

“We bought into it, so why are you letting us in the clubhouse and not smiting us? Don't we deserve it?” Perseid couldn’t help the words bursting out like a compulsion. Leonid flinched, and he wanted to punch himself, knowing Jupiter was close enough to hit her for his words. All those hands...

The grass underneath Venus’s feet burst into flame as she landed, burning in colors he didn’t have a word for. “Are you just saying that because we’re the devil? Or are you actually sorry for being terrible to us?” she asked.

“I’m not gonna lie, I’m fucking terrified. But... We _were_ dicks to you, and only some of it came from the counselors. And I’m sorry.”

It was silent for way too long, until finally Neptune brought her hands together in a single pathetic clap. “C- for effort. Guess we won’t kill you after all.”

Leonid was on her feet and shielding Perseid before he had a chance to blink, and Neptune snort-laughed.

“Kidding, _kidding_. Fuck, you people are jumpy. That just leaves you to become the devil,” Neptune said. “Last chance for you to run.”

They looked happier like this, Leonid with her body solid and statuesque, Orionid steadily bleeding seafoam, hair drifting with a salt wind that belonged to him alone. He had a second to feel very small and weak, before their strange hands reached out to him, letting him choose.

How it was supposed to go, before all this: the buses would come to drive them back into town, everyone exhausted and sticky, cheeks smudging against the windows. They would trade chat handles and phone numbers, or maybe not, because Leonid’s parents read her texts and Perseid’s wouldn’t like him talking that much with another guy. Maybe if he put Orionid under a girl’s name, he could get away with it, so he saved them anyway. The two of them would turn in their seat to talk to Leonid behind them, but she’d have to share with another girl, everyone crushed in to fit two buses. There wasn’t room to say what they needed to. That and a counselor listened in as he paced the aisle, stepping on people’s feet and falling over if they stopped too suddenly.

Perseid’s parents would be waiting in the motel in town, ready to take him home. Leonid would have a few minutes to say goodbye, under his parents staring down at her. They couldn’t hug while they were being watched. They would needle him with questions later, and he’d just have to say she was okay, they were in the same group, that was all. Then she’d be off in a taxi to the airport, to the next state over where no one would bother to hold up a sign with her name on it.

That’d leave him with Orionid, for a minute, before his parents started arguing about how they needed to hit the road _now_ , would you hurry it up already? He’d slap Orionid in the shoulder hard enough that he stumbled back a step, because hugging him would be worse than with Leonid. By the time they’d pulled out of the motel parking lot, Orionid would still be sitting in front of the convenience store with his suitcase, maybe eating chips he’d bought inside or using wet wipes to try and get the incense smell off. It wouldn’t work, and everyone would be able to tell where he’d come from.

His parents would be there in a while, he’d insist, deflecting Perseid’s mom’s questions. Twenty, thirty minutes max. It’d be fine.

How it could go, now: sirens, chasing him as he ran away. The local news would be there, but it’d take longer for the rest of the state to figure out it wasn’t a fluff piece. His family would be praying by the time he made it into town, maybe with a few other campers, maybe alone. They’d be praying at him, not for him. Maybe he was carrying the devil inside, or maybe he was a coward, but if you flunked out of a camp for the worst kids, there was no redeeming you.

He’d watch the other campers fight and lose, left in a weird, shaky post-devil quiet, shoved back into skin that didn’t feel right. Adults shouting, and trying to shake sense back into them. A group prayer, maybe. The rest of Team South dragged out of the woods, and knowing that they’d seen something he wouldn’t be able to understand. Knowing that he could have stayed to protect them.

How it went: Perseid took a step forward. Over Jupiter’s shoulder, he could see Neptune heaving herself out of the lake, water clinging to her like a blanket, flooding the grass as she walked. He could see Venus climbing one of the siren poles, and she stabbed her fingers through the siren, rearranging it to transmit some new signal.

Already the camp looked different. The light didn’t burn his eyes, even when it bounced off of Leonid, and the raindrops reflected something that didn’t match the forest, though they fell too fast to identify what that other place was. He could see figures moving in the trees. He could see the trees moving too.

“I want in,” Perseid said, and he took their hands. For a second, he thought his weak skin would tear or burn or whatever, but holding their hands wasn’t painful. It felt weird, but the sensation was coming from him, not them. When he looked down at his right hand, fingers interlaced with Orionid’s, he could see the veins pulsing inside his wrist, the bluest he had ever seen, a deep blue that shaded into green and traced up the length of his arm.

Blood turning green, sure, he could work with that. It was weird and inhuman, but it wasn’t on the level of a thousand hands. It wasn’t terrifying until they began to pulse. He could see them squirming and branching out into more and more paths, which veins definitely couldn’t do?? Could see something pushing up on the inside of his skin. He dropped their hands so he could touch the growth, to be sure it was real. It was throbbing with his racing heartbeat.

“What the shit?” It looked like a parasite from some kind of horror movie, ready to burst out. “Guys, I don’t—maybe I can’t do this, I—” Something began to press up out of his wrist, right on the pulse point.

Something must have gone wrong, or the devil was fucking with him because he wasn’t good enough. Or he was too good? Now there was something moving in his stomach too, and he doubled over, one arm wrapped around himself while the offending wrist dangled like he could pretend it wasn’t his. His eyes went hot and stinging, and he was certain something was going to burst out of them too. Orionid wiped at his cheek with a thumb and came away with it wet but not bloody.

It wasn’t the rain, not with the brim of his hat shielding his face. It had been such a long goddamn time since he’d ever gotten to cry about anything.

His wrist seemed to part, and green unfurled out of it, looking like a plant sprouting in fast forward. In a few seconds, it had already curled out a stem that wrapped around his forearm and grew leaves. Once the first one made it out of him, the rest of his body hurried to catch up, until he was becoming a garden all over.

It still didn’t _hurt,_ not really, but feeling roots spreading through his insides was too weird to grin and bear it. He couldn’t help gasping for breath as they held him up. It was embarrassing to be twitching and shaking in front of Jupiter, and Neptune was looking now too. He could feel the roots inside of him flinch down, a few leaves withering off their stems, and the buds speckling his arms froze, refusing to bloom. It should have been the easiest thing, going over to the devil, but not with all of them looking...

Group South clustered around him, blocking his view of anyone else. They were careful not to crush his new growths as Leonid held him from the side, sturdy-edged and warm from the sun, and Orionid crouched in front of him, hands cupping Perseid’s face.

“Keep going,” Orionid said, cold breath against his lips. “It’s fine, don’t stop now.”

“I _can’t!_ ” How had the other two changed so calmly? He wanted to lift his head to the sunlight and the pattering rain, but his eyes were overflowing, and it took all of his concentration to not bawl like a screw-up. Sin was supposed to be the easiest thing in the world, but he couldn’t even manage that.

“Hey.” Venus settled around them, her wings surrounding Group South, all those eyes staring at him. If... if it had been him finding Venus crying, back before all this went down... He flinched away from her, though his plants seemed to strain towards the light she gave off. “Hey, South. What’s your name?”

“P-Perseid,” he gasped out, the fear stunned out of him by the abrupt question. “L-like... like the meteor shower.”

“Perseid, I accept your apology. Don’t do that stuff again, and we’re good.” The eyes in her wings flared open, all of them looking down at him with the sort of light he’d been starved of for his whole life. All of him seemed to open up.

He hadn’t sobbed like that since he’d been a tiny kid. As he started crying in earnest, he could feel tears sinking back into his skin, roots spreading farther. More buds poked through and began to open, until he was covered with flowers.

Not just his arms. As he took their hands again, he started to bloom faster, flowers piercing out of his skin and through his clothes. A flower squirmed its way free below his eye, petals tickling at his cheek. He didn’t know the names of most of these, but he wanted to find out.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Jupiter crowed, and she had enough hands to fistbump all of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Group South was free real estate, ok


End file.
